A Friendly eReader Service Message: on reading comics on tablets, how to speed up your Nook HD+ and other stuff

A few things I have learned about eReaders recently worth noting for those who haven't yet discovered (the hard way):

Reading Comics on eReaders and Tablets:

This one has a few no-brainers, but there's definitely a "test the waters" approach to reading comics on ereaders right now. I've been buying more comics in electronic format lately (mostly the stuff that looks interesting but isn't part of my Batman/DC Universe obsession) and have a bit to say on the subject that may save you some headaches.

First, it goes without saying that you want a decent high resolution tablet for the job. The Nook HD+ is the best bang for your buck in this department, but the Nexus 7 (2013 edition, my son annihilated my 2012 edition) is also rather nice. Larger screen size helps a lot, but a high resolution can accomplish much.

So here's what you want in a good comic ereader:
1. Decent screen resolution
2. Decent screen size; 7 inches on the Nexus is the bare minimum...I get a lot more enjoyment out of the Nook HD+ screen.
3. An app that lets you expand/contract pages
4. A retailer that sells you a decent hi-res copy

So who meets the requirements? Each of the following were tested on my Nook HD+ and Nexus 7. I disqualified the Microsoft Surface as I have the 1st generation basic model, which has a 768X800 resolution, and that's acceptable but below what I consider the minimum standard for a comfortable viewing experience (the 1080p resolution on the Nook HD+ has really spoiled me).

Kindle App and Comics 
Test Files: Uncanny X-Men, Savage Hawkman, Wonder Woman

It borders on the tortuous to read comics on the Kindle App. The only Kindle device I own is the Kindle Paperwhite, and that's not a device you want to use to read comics on (trust me) so I used the Kindle App on the Nexus 7 and Nook HD+ in absence of a Kindle Fire. Unfortunately the Kindle App's strategy for letting you try to read comics on it is a "double tap to expand the panel" feature that basically magnifies roughly where you tapped, and also glaringly shows that the file sizes of the Kindle comics are smaller than the competitor's because they are lower resolution. The Kindle does not let you expand/contract pages nor does it let you take full page spreads and view them length-wise by holding your tablet sideways; you are locked into one view mode, essentially.
Rating: F

Nook Store and Comics 
Test Files: All Star Western, Dungeons & Dragons Graphic Novels, Cutter

The Nook store lets you download decent file sizes quickly, and the resolution is very nice. The reader lets you expand and contract the page as well as view it lengthways by turning the tablet on its side. You may pay a few cents more on average for comics in the Nook store but the quality and ease of use is well worth it.
Rating: A

Google Play Store and Comics
Test Files: Savage Sword of Conan, Fatale, Cyberforce, and lots more

Google Play has the largest download files and it shows: the pages are crisp and look great on the Nexus 7 as well as the Nook HD+, making for the best reading experience by far. The experience was light night and day from the Kindle's lower res, limited functionality editions....and in fact I started this process with Google Play, so the net result was a wave of disappointment at the low quality on the Kindle. The Google Play store often has some decent sales but the prices are, like Nook, slightly higher on average....but the tiny extra cost is well worth the much more satisfying reading experience.
Rating: A+

Anyone who reads comics knows that as a medium the comic artists and writers take advantage of the full page and sometimes two-page spreads for effect. If the ereader can't accommodate this then it's not worth the time. Whoever designed the "panel exansion" idea for the Kindle App doesn't understand that you don't just read "one panel at a time" nor can you really grokk what's going on in a panel when your double-tapping only highlights part of the image. Luckily Google Play and Nook both understand this and offer a better suite of tools to do the job....with Google Play winning out by virtue of it's excellent hi-res (and very large) images.

Next up...

What to do when your Nook HD+ is slow (alias: how to make it work instead of chucking it out a window)

This is a real thing. Apparently many Nook HD+ tablets acted a little...weird....after the updates last year that embedded Google Play into the device. I don't pretend to understand the history of these updates, but if you have a Nook HD+ and it acts like it's operating under an XP-powered OS on a netbook from 2005 riddled with spyware then fear not, there's a quick and easy solution that does not involve violence:

Deregister and Erase in your machine's options, then re-register and download all your stuff again. It works like a charm....I have no idea if that means the updates from last year were staged in a way that led to suboptimal performance or corruption of files to cause a slowdown....or it doing this simply cleared out whatever invisibe homunculi were torturing the poor tablet, but after I did this I had my Nook HD+ back and it runs as smoothly as my Nexus 7. So take this tip to heart!

Reader Apps: Aldiko, Nook Reader and Kindle Reader Apps

It's been a while since I've talked about tablets and ereaders. Last year I dived in with a Nook Tablet, and in December last year I snagged a Nexus 7 for myself and my wife. My wife has been addicted to the multitudinous menagerie of freemium apps on the Android Marketplace ever since, while I mostly download an occasional cool non-freemium game, lots of reader apps and the Pulse news app (a fine substitute for the morning paper). So far I've probably spent about $100 on Nook apps (not counting ebook purchases) while my wife has spent....well....I try not to think about it. Anyway!

Android apps in the Google Play store include both a Nook app and a Kindle app. The Nook app easily linked to my Barnes & Noble account, giving me access to my full library of titles through the Nook book store. Kindle was a new experience for me, as I had not previously owned a Kindle and had no apps through Amazon's e-store. I downloaded it, found a few freebies, and mused at how their app wasn't nearly as functional as their actual online store was at suggesting alarmingly accurate recommendations for my buying habits. In fact it doesn't offer any suggestions at all. Oversight? Limitation of the app architecture/programming? Patent issue? I have no idea. It's linked to my main account, so that's not excuse.

Aside from these two official apps I downloaded something called Aldiko. The version I have is free, which means an occasional ad pops up (I hardly ever see them, and never when reading a book). The premium version is $2.99 and I may cave and buy it soon. It supposedly includes some extra functionality, including highlight options, note taking a "home widget feature."

Aldiko easily found and imported my Baen Book collection, as well as my Paizo Pathfinder Tales collection. After some experimentation I determined it could import any and all books though the Nook app which were not locked by password DRM (presumably by the publisher), and it was pleasantly surprising to me to see that quite a few of my Nook store purchases were not DRM-locked. Less surprising was how many "big name" titles were.

The Nook reader app, as well as the Nook Tablet software have some decent customization options, but the Aldiko reader app offered a few perks the others didn't. It's not quite as good at reading some epub file formats as the Nook and Kindle apps are, interestingly....but the ability to do a real day/night feature was a plus (Kindle can do this too....Nook's is more like a day/gray feature). For those of you unfamiliar with this, the idea of a day/night feature is whether you are reading black on white or white on black. Nook does an unpleasant "white on gray," while everyone else does the more eye-friendly and possibly power-saving white on black (is it power saving? No idea).

Beyond that Aldiko works well for reading epubs. It even imported some unusual items like my Resident Evil Art Book that I got with RE 6, although it is an inferior experience to using the Adobe Reader app. And by inferior I mean "horrible." None of these ereaders are good at handling PDF files.

Aldiko cannot see any of the Kindle books I have purchased (I've been picking up Tim Curran's amazing novels...always been a fan ever since The Hive), so they won't import. I am not sure but I think Amazon DRM locks all the content it sells, unlike the Nook, which will make exceptions on publisher request.

The Nexus 7 can drain battery life quickly with some games and apps, but so far all three reader apps are modest in power use and you can read on the Nexus 7 for almost (but not quite) as long as on the Nexus Tablet (which gets me around 11 hours on average).

Aldiko does not have an app on the Nexus Tablet, so I couldn't tell you if it can tie accounts between devices to share your library. Nook Reader app does this, of course, so if I start a book on the Nexus 7 and later resume reading it on the Nook Tablet, it will know where I left off on both devices (provided I've got wifi connectivity during this period). I suspect the Kindle App does the same, for those with actual Kindles.

Although I like Kindle's ease of use, I am surprised at its limited functionality for shopping, being used to Amazon's great site online. The Nook Reader app functions almost, but not quite like the Nook Tablet. It's missing a couple conveniences (it doesn't scan for all epub files and group them together like it does on the Nook Tablet, for example) but the store search functionality is identical to and sometimes slightly more efficient than the same feature on their proprietary device. Aldiko, meanwhile, offers a storefront which lets you search several independent online sellers: Smashwords, Feedbooks, O'Reilly and Romance Books. Not the greatest selection....but better than nothing. Still, given it will take pretty much any epub book and make it available, no matter where that book came from (so long as its DRM free), that means you can shop at Baen Books, Crossroad Press, Paizo or wherever you like and just import it manually.

As a gamer, a parent, an avid reader these apps are all immensely useful. Given that they are all free (or have free versions) there's no harm in having access to all three. Aldiko has proven very handy for managing third party purchases and epub titles that are not DRM locked, and I definitely recommend it.

And Then The Nexus 7 Appeared

I have accomplished three things this week, none of which involved blogging. First:

First, I worked on recovering from a flu-like sickness that was keen to turn into a bronchial infection (I'm prone to these) which meant I missed a bit of work. Not the exciting part here!



Second, I resolved my long-standing love/hate relationship with Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition. In the wake of the latest round of playtest materials I decided that the new edition was shaping up to be pretty decent, something I actually want to play, and lots of. Poor 4E, meanwhile, languishes in a weird limbo where I want to play it but can't get a consistent group together, as Pathfinder has gained a near-Stockholm-Syndrome like grip on the gaming community at large. More over, when I do run 4E, I inevitably am reminded of its idocyncracies, the reasons I get annoyed with it in the first place....they are little, but devilish bits which always rear their ugly heads because they are baked into the rules, and are hard to extract without a functional rewrite or simply ditching the system entirely (ergo Pathfinder).

So I took all of my 4E collection down to the local Hastings ("Books and More") and managed to get enough credit to pick up a Nexus 7 tablet and extras)....a worthy sacrifice! Which leads us to...



I had previously bought a Nexus 7 for my wife as a XMas present. I couldn't say much about the hardware from her experience, as all she has done with the thing is feed virtual dragon colonies, but I had it on good authority this was a decent gadget. I was not disappointed!

I'll be raving more about the coolness of the Nexus 7 in the coming weeks, and also talk apps on it. The device isn't entirely replacing my Nook, which will remain my main ereader, but it is expanding my repertoire to include the wide world of Android apps on a Tegra quadcore processor. There are some really fantastic games out there for Android, and some even cooler game resources for tabletop (the entirety of the Pathfinder SRD at my fingertips in a fine app called Masterwork Tools pathfinder Open Resource, for example). I have also packed it to the gills with games, many quite good (Dead Space Android, Mass Effect Infiltration, Order & Chaos Online, Chaos Rings, NOVA 3, Dead Trigger, Shadowgun and NFS Most Wanted, to name a few).

I can safely say that I know why the dedicated handheld market is shrinking, now. Nintendo and Sony appear to be behind the times with their quaint, costly dedicated game systems, while any old Android tablet can run fantastic games now. People who think tablets are just for casual gamers....yeah, keep on telling yerself that....



Finally, I managed to pick up my copy of Champions Complete, an innovative take on the Hero System that gets back to its roots, and repackages the game in a very attractive 240 page book that does not resemble a pre-internet-era Yellow Pages phone book. Sweet! I'll be reading through it as time permits, maybe I'll even be inspired to run Champions again for the first time in many, many years.